What Our Grandkids Will Be Reading to Their Own Kids in History Books
Title
What Our Grandkids Will Be Reading to Their Own Kids in History Books
Creator
vtpoet@gmail.com
Date
April, 2020
Contributor
Ronald Lewis
Spatial Coverage
Text
What Our Grandkids Will Be Reading
to Their Own Kids in History Books
Our great-grandchildren will simply
not believe the old stories of year 2020,
when we distrusted strangers and
kept our distances from them,
from even our own family members,
all wearing face masks as though
we were going to masquerade balls
or out to rob banks . . .
everyone opening their mailboxes
with plastic gloves, reaching in
and carefully bringing out the mail
as though we were on the bomb squad,
then letting it sit unopened in our homes
for at least three days
before we dared to open it . . .
when we mailed for foodstuffs,
or had the markets prepare for pickup,
food equal to the gross national product
of Third World countries,
cardboard and styrofoam barges
sailing in the locks and
chambers of our kitchens,
toilet paper stacked in every living space
that we sinfully threatened to trade
with others like gold bricks.
We weren’t going to let our
cupboards empty out with extinction.
No, we imagined other families
rolling through the grocery aisles
of the once well-stocked stores
with their rib-cage bare carts,
their starving children reaching out
to everything with eye appeal or
that looked sugary and
impermissible to their parents,
their little bodies cinched tighter
every week like drawstring bags.
Ronald Lewis
Otter Creek Poets (via Zoom)
Vermont Poetry Newsletter
& Poetry Event Calendar
to Their Own Kids in History Books
Our great-grandchildren will simply
not believe the old stories of year 2020,
when we distrusted strangers and
kept our distances from them,
from even our own family members,
all wearing face masks as though
we were going to masquerade balls
or out to rob banks . . .
everyone opening their mailboxes
with plastic gloves, reaching in
and carefully bringing out the mail
as though we were on the bomb squad,
then letting it sit unopened in our homes
for at least three days
before we dared to open it . . .
when we mailed for foodstuffs,
or had the markets prepare for pickup,
food equal to the gross national product
of Third World countries,
cardboard and styrofoam barges
sailing in the locks and
chambers of our kitchens,
toilet paper stacked in every living space
that we sinfully threatened to trade
with others like gold bricks.
We weren’t going to let our
cupboards empty out with extinction.
No, we imagined other families
rolling through the grocery aisles
of the once well-stocked stores
with their rib-cage bare carts,
their starving children reaching out
to everything with eye appeal or
that looked sugary and
impermissible to their parents,
their little bodies cinched tighter
every week like drawstring bags.
Ronald Lewis
Otter Creek Poets (via Zoom)
Vermont Poetry Newsletter
& Poetry Event Calendar
Collection
Citation
vtpoet@gmail.com, “What Our Grandkids Will Be Reading to Their Own Kids in History Books,” COVID-19 Archive, accessed December 22, 2024, https://covid-19.digitalvermont.org/items/show/150.